Democratic Sentinel, Volume 14, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 October 1890 — Reciprocity at Home. [ARTICLE]

Reciprocity at Home.

Cliauncey M. Depew advises the New York farmers to take as their motto the throe R’s—Reciprocity, Retaliation and Revenue. The farmers are already for revenue; only the trouble is that tho tariff makes fearful inroads into their revenue. In order to get revenue they must first got reciprocity at home, a reciprocity which places an equal burden of taxation on every man; and when the farmers get that kind of reciprocity they can very well afford to ltet retaliation take care of itself—they will, in fact, have all the retaliation they need. Depew is not half so shrewd as people credit him with being. If the farmers should take his advice and demand retaliation, what would become of the system of protection which Depew upholds, and which places burdens upon the farmers for other people's benefit? Ought not Depew to have told these New York farmers, rather, that the mottoes for them to follow are long suffering toward their Egyptian taskmasters, and the patience which endureth all things from trusts and the tariffs which create trusts? He should have taught them to give to him that’ takes from them—if the coat is taken, to give the cloak also—and to resist not the tariff evil that is daily making them poorer and poorer. Farmers can very well afford to abstain from retaliation; because they are being robbed, they do not need to retaliate upon their oppressors and rob them of what they have already gained. One thing they can do and ought to do: they should say with emphasis that this thing must stop; that the day has come of equal rights to all and special favors to none. Reciprocity must begin at home, giving back to every man tho inborn right which has so long been denied—tho right to use his labor and the his labor according to his own will, without having to make enforced contributions to others. Reciprocity in trade is trading on equal conditions, and it is precisely this which the farmers of this country are not now allowed to do. The laws of the country inako such reciprocity impossible, for the farmers are compelled to sell at a price fixed in the free-trade markets of tho world, markets in which the so-called “pauper nations” figure as chief competitors; and they are compelled to buy in an artificially dear market, a market made dear simply and solely and confessedly by protection. Reciprocity at home! Let that be tho watchword for farmers. If they demand it they can have it, for the demands of the farmers of this land aro bound to be heeded; and when they get that kind of reciprocity they will get revenue, too, and retaliation can go by the board. It is time equal rights should prevail in this so-called land of tho free.